Thoughts on Life, Love, Politics, Hypocrisy and Coming Out in Mid-Life

Tuesday, April 18, 2017

The Inside Story of the Game of Thrones White House

That the current White House administration is a dysfunctional basket case is a topic of raging discussion in Washington, D.C. Now, a lengthy piece in Vanity Fair pulls back the curtain and makes it clear that behind closed doors a Game of Thrones (or for older readers, mix of Dallas and Dynasty) is unfolding on a daily basis. The problem, of course, is that the White House is not some fictional monarchy or some fictional oil company based in Dallas or Denver. What is most worrying is that more time seems to be spent on palace intrigues than is spent on running the country. One is left yet again wondering, WTF were Trump voters thinking? Was white rage so strong that all thoughts of whether a functioning administration would be possible were thrown to the wind? Here are article highlights:

[N]ow,
in full view of the country and the world, we are watching what happens when a
president is elected on the basis of an incoherent and crowd-sourced agenda,
one that pandered to white nationalists and stoked economic anxiety. When that
same president is someone who has never managed a large bureaucracy and brings
almost no close associates who have. And when some of the aides he haphazardly
acquired a few months before taking office care more about their own ambitions
than his own—whatever they are.

When Donald Trump moved into the Oval Office, he
redecorated decisively, replacing his predecessor’s maroon drapes with heavy
gold ones. He also brought with him a collection of advisers who, according to another
senior administration official, not only have “breathtaking personal agendas”
and are willing to “malign the people around him” but are also prepared to say,
“We are going to do it our way and push through what we want whether it is
right for him or not.” The two former presidents Trump is most often compared
to are Reagan (for the unserious image that Reagan had as a B-list movie actor)
and Richard Nixon (for his authoritarian tendencies, his paranoia, and his
antipathy toward the press). But those presidents, this senior administration
official explained, had “a real ideology and a real set of issues, and that
doesn’t exist here.”

Unlike previous presidents, Trump has also neglected to
appoint a professional staff with a high-level governing or White House
background. This is due in part to ignorance.

The
West Wing right now is a place where the ground is always shifting. With the
exception of two family members—Trump’s daughter Ivanka, an unpaid assistant to
the president, and her husband, Jared Kushner, a senior adviser to the
president—no one on Trump’s topmost White House staff has been with the new
president for very long. That presents a sharp contrast with the teams around Hillary Clinton and Barack
Obama. Trump’s staff is as unbridled as the president himself. His
advisers came together almost by accident and by default. They exhibit loyalty
to their boss in front of the camera, only to whisper about him (and about
their rivals, often in vicious terms) when the camera is gone.

Before
they joined the campaign, many of the current staffers had shown no allegiance
to Trump. Steve Bannon, at the moment still the chief
strategist, and the self-styled intellectual leader of Trump’s base of
“deplorables,” as Hillary Clinton called them, had tried on several other
politicians—Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz—before settling on
Trump, whom Bannon referred to last year in Vanity Fair as a “blunt instrument”
for his own cause. Reince Priebus, Trump’s current chief of
staff, is hardly a longtime loyalist.

The
Priebus-Conway story circulates inside the Ivanka camp as a way of reminding
everyone who Trump’s real allies are. But even Ivanka has told friends, almost
by way of apology, “I didn’t ask for this.” Senior administration officials
told me that both Bannon and Priebus partisans have spent hours on the phone
with reporters, planting stories about each other and their colleagues.

Trump’s
West Wing is beginning to resemble the family real-estate business Trump grew
up in, which has always had more in common with The Godfather than
with The Organization Man. Trump has pulled family close. Kushner now
occupies the office that is physically closest to the Oval Office. Ivanka Trump has taken on an official role
despite her initial intention to simply be “a daughter.” The appointees who
have been championed by Ivanka and Jared seem at the moment to be on the
rise—no surprise to some. . . . . A close associate of Trump’s narrowed that
safe zone even further: “Everyone is dispensable, except one person: Ivanka.”
But, this person warned, speaking of Jared and Ivanka, “at some point you get
them out of this,” because otherwise they are going to get destroyed.

No
one has been secure in his or her position. Trump’s initial selection for
national-security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned after misleading White House
officials about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the United States. Six
weeks after his departure, he offered to testify before Congress, possibly
about his former colleagues, in exchange for immunity. Next up was Kellyanne
Conway, who was effectively sidelined. Then it was Bannon’s turn. “I’m not sure
Steve does a lot of actual work,” said one person in the Trump circle shortly
before Bannon was removed from the National Security Council, a position he had
enjoyed for fewer than 10 weeks. Prior to his removal, Bannon had repeatedly
threatened to quit the administration if he were ousted from the N.S.C.,
according to two people familiar with the matter.

Bannon
seems to have felt betrayed by Kushner and has retaliated by planting negative
stories about him. Kushner sees Bannon as an ideologue whose approach has
stymied the president’s effectiveness. . . . . Bannon, who has denied that he
ever threatened to resign or that he ever insulted Kushner, has been pushing
back. “There is a concerted effort to paint Jared and Ivanka as anti-movement”
among the Bannon faction of the staff, said one senior administration official.

Who
will be next to fall from grace is a daily parlor game of the Washington press
corps. What seems clear is that each member of the staff operates with the
knowledge that there will always be someone who seems about to fall next, and
that that person may well be him or her. This uncertainty is frozen in place by
a peculiar trait of the boss: as one West Wing official told me, “For a person
who has made a very successful TV career off ‘You’re fired,’ he’s not someone
who likes to fire people.”

Bannon
had been viewed as one of the two (with Kushner) most powerful members of the
West Wing team, and for a time was referred to (reportedly with his own tacit
encouragement) as President Bannon—a joke that isn’t a joke. He keeps a
personal publicist and is the self-appointed guardian of the issues that matter
to the base that got Trump elected. But, according to a senior administration
official, Bannon’s effort to put himself on the National Security Council,
without Trump having been fully briefed, made Ivanka and Jared suspicious of
his motives. “This was honestly a dark-of-night operation,” this official told me.

But
Bannon’s real undoing in the eyes of his boss, according to three people
familiar with the situation, involves his perceived attacks through the media
against Kushner and Ivanka as liberal Democrats seeking to undermine a more
conservative agenda. Bannon’s other big mistake has been taking credit for
Trump’s own popularity, such as it is. Referring to the Time cover, a
senior administration official told me, “He is very talented at making himself
seem the hero of the conservatives who elected Donald Trump”—the implication
being that if you lose Bannon, you lose them. “It’s a very smart thing to do on
his part,” this official added, “but ultimately it’s not a sustainable strategy
for him. The president sees through that kind of thing, and he’s aware of
what’s happening.” The official went on: “The reality is, if he keeps this up
he’s not going to be here.”

Skepticism
about Bannon drips from West Wing tongues, making it understandable why he
might feel vulnerable. Gary Cohn, Trump’s chief economic adviser and a former
president of Goldman Sachs, is temperamentally a key Bannon foe. And no matter
how many hugs Reince Priebus may exchange with Bannon in front of conservative
audiences, so is Priebus.

Ivanka
Trump, who could play the No-BS Heiress in our reality show, and her husband,
Jared, the Crafty In-Law, are both children of privilege and are both
extraordinarily loyal to their fathers. The senior administration official told
me that, with this president, it is “family above all else. That’s how he has
lived his life. Anybody thinking they are going to win a fight against the
family is not very smart.” Kushner has reportedly described himself as a “first
among equals” among White House staffers—not an endearing self-assessment, but
probably an accurate one—and has been given an almost laughable assortment of
responsibilities.

The
Kushners were a prominent Democratic real-estate family in New Jersey. Their
relationship to politics was mostly as members of the donor class. A person
close to Jared told me that growing up in New Jersey taught him the utterly
transactional nature of politics. His ability to move with ease from one
political ideology to another, depending on what seems useful at the moment,
comes naturally.

In
every White House, there are competing loyalties and rivalries. That dynamic is
normal. What is unusual about this presidency is that Trump himself is not a
stable center of gravity and may be incapable of becoming one. He knows little,
believes in little, and shows signs of regretting what has happened to him.
Governing requires saying no to one’s strongest supporters and yes to one’s
fiercest opponents. To have that presence of mind requires a clear and unified
vision from the president. “Without an ideology or a worldview, all you have is
a scramble for self-preservation and self-aggrandizement,” a former West Wing
aide told me.

And
it is a scramble without boundaries. What has been seen in the West Wing is now
playing out in every Cabinet department and government agency: the competing
agendas of a jockeying staff are being transplanted to the upper reaches
throughout the executive branch as now Bannon, now Kushner, now Priebus, now
Pence push their acolytes and protégés into hundreds of senior positions. The
White House mess may soon be everywhere.

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Out gay attorney in a committed relationship; formerly married and father of three wonderful children; sometime activist and political/news junkie; survived coming out in mid-life and hope to share my experiences and reflections with others.
In the career/professional realm, I am affiliated with Caplan & Associates PC where I practice in the areas of real estate, estate planning (Wills, Trusts, Advanced Medical Directives, Financial Powers of Attorney, Durable Medical Powers of Attorney); business law and commercial transactions; formation of corporations and limited liability companies and legal services to the gay, lesbian and transgender community, including birth certificate amendment.

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